Gandhi to rely on a mix of young and old
NEWDELHI: Rahul Gandhi’s immediate task after taking over the reins of the party from his mother Sonia Gandhi will be to carry out an organisational reshuffle and reconstitute the powerful Congress Working Committee (CWC).
The message coming out of his ongoing reshuffle seems to be clear – there will be no blood bath and that the new -look Congress will continue to have a mix of young and the old. The 47-yearold Rahul has been virtually running the party for more than two years now with Sonia taking a back step. The changes so far suggest that he will not shy away from fixing responsibilities. For example, outspoken general secretary Digvijaya Singh who has been cut to size.
Not only has Singh been divested of the charge of Goa and Telangana but also of the important state of Karnataka which goes to polls early next year.
Karnataka is the only big state after Punjab where the Congress is in power and fancies its chances given that the BJP is a divided house with a section led by backward caste leader KS Easwarappa up in arms against its chief BS Yeddyurappa who belongs to the powerful Lingayat community.
Singh, however, continues to hold the charge of Andhra Pradesh where the Congress has been reduced to political margins due to its move to bifurcate the state. Other poor performers such as Mohan Prakash, Ambika Soni, BK Hariprasad too have been punished with less harsh measures. They continue to be the general secretaries.
A general secretary is a top ranking functionary in the Congress hierarchy and coordinates between a state unit and the party high command.
WHO’S IN?
Former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, ex-union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Lok Sabha MP KC Venugopal, Rahul Gandhi’s confidante Deepak Babaria and former Rajya Sabha member Avinash Pande have all been made general secretaries.
While Gehlot manages the party affairs in poll-bound Gujarat, Shinde looked after another Himachal Pradesh, another pollbound state. Babaria has been given the charge of Madhya Pradesh and Pande will take care of Rajasthan. Similarly, ex-mps RC Khuntia, PL Punia and RPN Singh have been elevated and appointed as in-charge of Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand respectively.
An in-charge is a post created to accommodate a middle rung leader without the designation of a general secretary.
The fresh changes are part of a new strategy aimed at adapting to the changing times. It lays down a strict condition that a Congress functionary will hold the charge of only one state.
With this, the party has shunned its decades-old practice of indiscriminately handing charge over multiple states to general secretaries or any other leader of a similar stature. NEW DELHI: The long-delayed, much-speculated change of guard in the Congress is finally a reality.
Rahul Gandhi is president now of the party founded in 1885 – and facing its worst political test since Independence.
In many ways it’s a transition from de facto to de jure. The sixth generation Gandhi-nehru scion has called the shots since his elevation as vice-president in the beginning of 2013 without picking up the testamur that makes a leader: a poll victory!
The ongoing campaign in Gujarat is his chance to prove skeptics wrong by winning or at least improving the party’s tally.
For the victory in Punjab, where he campaigned, was attributed to the charismatic Amarinder Singh. The sole silver line amid the run of defeats were the 20-odd seats the Congress won in UP in the 2009 general elections.
In fact, the party’s return to power then was popular acceptance of Sonia Gandhi’s inclusive persona, Manmohan Singh’s economic prowess and Rahul’s youthful appeal. Theirs was a reassuring blend for city dwellers and rural folks alike in the backdrop of the 2008 US subprime economic crisis that had global ripples.
That’s the past the Congress’s striving to revive in post-gst and demonetisation Gujarat where its challenger is the same Narendra Modi who took it to the cleaners in 2014. It’s from that rump of 44 Lok Sabha seats the new president has to rebuild the Congress.
Does he have it in him? Can he help the party regain the enviable past that’s in a shambles? There’s a tenuous body of evidence now that he’s no longer the fumbling, bumbling Rahul who came across as the Congress family’s reluctant, reticent ‘karta.’
Not till long ago, a widely shared impression in the party was that unlike his mother, he wasn’t a consensus builder. That he was a chronic absentee prone to deserting the post amid battles he should’ve led from the front.
But the leader some of his colleagues are seeing in Gujarat is ‘another’ person: willing to listen and accept advice; take party-persons across age-groups along rather than restricting himself to a cabal of chosen aides.
A Gujarat PCC office holder said it was unusual for him to hear Rahul asking for seniors on seeing them missing from his entourage.
He dwelt as much on his selfcorrecting ways at a public rally, admitting that the hammering he got from the BJP was for him a lesson.
“I’m a changed person,” the Gujarat leader quoted him as telling the crowd.
The pragmatist in him was evident as much at the Dwarkadheesh Temple.
He was all attention as priests showed him records of earlier visits by his family elders: Pandit Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. He wore through the day’s campaign the vermillion tilak they applied, till he reached another temple at dusk.
But the question remains: has Rahul changed or people are looking at him differently? Is he, as Mani Shankar Aiyar often says, blooming late the way Nehru, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia did?
The jury is out and watching. Credit nevertheless goes to him for assuming command in the middle of a poll battle that can go either way.
THE 47YEAROLD RAHUL GANDHI HAS BEEN VIRTUALLY RUNNING THE PARTY FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS NOW WITH SONIA TAKING A BACK STEP